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polio
Israel's Ferocious Bombing of Northern Gaza Halts Polio Vaccination Effort
"It is imperative to stop the polio outbreak as soon as possible," the World Health Organization warned, "before more children are paralyzed and poliovirus spreads further."
Oct 23, 2024
Israel's intensified bombardment of northern Gaza—which according to Palestinian officials has killed or wounded more than 1,700 people since early October—has forced a halt to the third phase of a polio vaccination campaign scheduled to begin Wednesday.
"Due to the escalating violence, intense bombardment, mass displacement orders, and lack of assured humanitarian pauses across most of northern Gaza, the Polio Technical Committee for Gaza—including the Palestinian Ministry of Health, World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), and partners—have been compelled to postpone the third phase of the polio vaccination campaign, which was set to begin today," WHO said in a statement Wednesday. "This final phase of the ongoing campaign aimed to vaccinate 119,279 children across northern Gaza."
"The current conditions, including ongoing attacks on civilian infrastructure, continue to jeopardize people's safety and movement in northern Gaza, making it impossible for families to safely bring their children for vaccination, and health workers to operate," the agency continued.
On Tuesday, UNRWA staffers in northern Gaza issued a desperate plea to the international community as Israeli forces continued to massacre Palestinians and besiege area medical facilities. More than 100,000 wounded and sick Palestinians urgently need medical treatment that is unavailable as area hospitals cannot operate.
"People are just waiting to die," UNRWA said. "They feel deserted, hopeless, and alone. They live from one hour to the next, fearing death at every second."
Following numerous warnings, Gaza earlier this year recorded its first case of polio since the highly contagious virus—which often causes paralysis and can kill—was eradicated there 25 years ago, prompting calls by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and others for a temporary truce to enable a vaccination drive.
"It is impossible to conduct a polio vaccination campaign with war raging all over," the U.N. chief said at the time after a 10-month-old infant became Gaza's first new poliomyelitis case this century.
In late August, Israel agreed to a staggered series of three-day "polio pauses" to allow healthcare workers to fan out across the enclave and vaccinate 640,000 children under the age of 10. However, Israel's recent escalation in northern Gaza is threatening to derail much of the progress made so far.
According to the WHO:
To interrupt poliovirus transmission, at least 90% of all children in every community and neighborhood must be vaccinated—a prerequisite for an effective campaign to interrupt the outbreak and prevent its further spread. Humanitarian pauses are essential for its success, allowing partners to deliver vaccination supplies to health facilities, families to safely access vaccination sites, and mobile teams of health workers to reach children in their communities. A delay in administering a second dose of [vaccine] within six weeks reduces the impact of two closely spaced rounds on concurrently boosting the immunity of all children and interrupting poliovirus transmission. Having a significant number of children miss out on their second vaccine dose will seriously jeopardize efforts to stop the transmission of poliovirus in Gaza. This could also lead to further spread of poliovirus in the Gaza Strip and neighboring countries, with the risk of more children being paralyzed.
"It is imperative to stop the polio outbreak as soon as possible, before more children are paralyzed and poliovirus spreads further," WHO asserted. "It is crucial therefore that the vaccination campaign in northern Gaza is facilitated through the implementation of the humanitarian pauses, ensuring access for wherever eligible children are located."
"WHO and UNICEF urge all parties to ensure that civilians, health workers, and civilian infrastructure, such as schools, shelters, hospitals, are protected and renew their call for an immediate cease-fire," the agency added.
Earlier this month, the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory released a report detailing how "Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza's healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities."
Israel's obliteration of Gaza's healthcare infrastructure and targeting of healthcare and medical workers has been entered as evidence in the South Africa-led genocide case currently before the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
Meanwhile, as Common Dreamsreported Wednesday, Israel's bombardment and invasion of Lebanon—which has killed and wounded thousands of people while displacing around 1.2 million others in recent weeks—is causing a health crisis in which cholera and other diseases are rapidly spreading.
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UN Expert Fears 'Almost the Entire Population' of Gaza Exterminated If Israel Not Stopped
"The range of presumable direct and indirect deaths could be between 15 and 20% of the population already by the end of this year," said U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese.
Sep 06, 2024
Reviewing a global public health expert's analysis of the probable ultimate death toll in Gaza from Israel's relentless assault, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories said Friday that without a cease-fire, the Israel Defense Forces "could end up exterminating almost the entire population in Gaza over the next couple of years."
"The range of presumable direct and indirect deaths could be between 15% and 20% of the population already by the end of this year," said Francesca Albanese, citing research by Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh.
Sridhar wrote in The Guardian about the difficulty of counting the dead on Thursday, days after the first of three planned pauses in fighting began to allow families to get to medical clinics for polio vaccines. Israel agreed to the pauses after one child was diagnosed with paralysis resulting from polio, which was detected in wastewater in Gaza in July, alarming public health experts.
"The discovery of polio in Gaza reminds us that it's becoming increasingly difficult to assess the true cost of the war," wrote Sridhar. "We don't have a sense of how widespread disease and starvation are—so-called 'indirect deaths'—and we are in the dark in terms of total number of deaths. Usually, data is collected from hospitals and morgues, which certify each death and notify the health ministry. Yet these civil registration systems have broken down in Gaza, meaning there is no accurate data on how many deaths have occurred."
As Common Dreamsreported on Wednesday, despite Israel's agreement to pauses in fighting to allow children to be vaccinated, bombings by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) continued this week, with some targeting "locations near the vaccination centers."
Human rights advocates have said since Israel began its bombardment of Gaza last October that along with the threat of bombings and shelling, Palestinians face the ever-growing threat of starvation and disease due to Israel's near-total blockade on humanitarian aid.
"If deaths continue at this rate—about 23,000 a month—there would be an additional 149,500 deaths by the end of the year, some six and half months from the initial mid-June estimate. Using the method, the total deaths since the conflict began would be estimated at about 335,500 in total."
In its regular report on the humanitarian situation in Gaza on Friday, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Israeli evacuation orders in addition to blockades caused daily meals provided to families to drop 35% in July and August.
"The food security situation in the Gaza Strip is deteriorating due to the critical shortages of aid commodities as well as ongoing hostilities, insecurity, damaged roads, access limitation and breakdown of law and order," said the agency, noting that more than 1 million people in southern and central Gaza received no food rations in August.
United Nations experts warned in July that Israel's "targeted starvation campaign" has "resulted in famine across all of Gaza," with at least 34 Palestinians dying of malnutrition as hundreds of aid delivery trucks were stranded in Egypt, unable to cross into the enclave.
The spread of disease is also a continued threat due to "the staggering increase in the cost of basic hygiene items" and attacks on health centers, said OCHA on Friday. The price of soap increased 1,177% in July, compared to July 2023.
"The lack of affordable hygiene items, combined with limited access to clean water and sanitation facilities, poses a growing risk of severe health impacts," said the agency. "This is especially true for families who have been displaced, as they face extreme difficulties maintaining basic hygiene in overcrowded shelters and displacement sites, while critical facilities—such as health centers, community kitchens, child-protection spaces, nutrition centers, and schools—lack the necessary tools to ensure safe and sanitary conditions. These conditions are all likely to deteriorate further during the winter."
Sridhar noted that while at least 40,878 people are confirmed dead in Gaza, "it is estimated that there are more than 10,000 bodies buried under rubble still (meaning they can't be counted), as well as a rising number of unidentifiable bodies."
Israel faces a South Africa-led genocide case at the International Court of Justice.
Sridhar's report came two months after public health experts estimated in The Lancet that even if a cease-fire were agreed to immediately, the true death toll in Gaza could ultimately reach roughly 186,000—nearly 8% of the population.
"If deaths continue at this rate—about 23,000 a month—there would be an additional 149,500 deaths by the end of the year, some six and half months from the initial mid-June estimate," wrote Sridhar. "Using the method, the total deaths since the conflict began would be estimated at about 335,500 in total."
Sridhar urged advocates to not "get lost in these numbers and forget the name and the face behind each one," and to continue pushing for a cease-fire and public health measures like the polio vaccination campaign that could save thousands of children from paralysis.
"Attempts to access the strip by the U.N., like the one resulting in humanitarian pauses for polio vaccinations, save lives," wrote Sridhar. "They make a difference to hundreds of thousands of families, even within the abject horror of war."
Albanese suggested that eventually, the world will have to face the potentially hundreds of thousands of deaths that powerful countries including the United States—the largest funder of Israel's military—allowed to happen.
"Once the dust settles, I can't imagine how the world will go on after having allowed that," said Albanese. "Again."
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Israel's War on Palestinian Children Must End
The betrayal of these children by the international community shall stain the collective consciousness of humankind for decades to come.
Sep 05, 2024
The Israeli war on Gaza has become a war on Palestinian children. This was as true on October 7 as it is today.
On August 17, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for a seven-day ceasefire to allow children in Gaza to be vaccinated against polio. "I am appealing to all parties to provide concrete assurances right away, guaranteeing humanitarian pauses for the campaign," he said.
The first such case of the devastating epidemic was discovered in the town of Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
“It is scientifically known that for every 200 virus infections, only one will show the full symptoms of polio, while the remaining cases may present mild symptoms such as a cold or a slight fever,” Palestinian Health Minister Majed Abu Ramadan said on that same day.
This means that the virus may have spread to all parts of Gaza Strip, where the entire healthcare system has been largely destroyed.
The ten-month-old Palestinian baby who was first to contract the poliovirus, like many more, never received a vaccination dose against the disease.
No child, let alone a whole generation of children, should endure this much suffering, regardless of the political reasoning or context.
To prevent an even greater disaster in war-stricken Gaza, the World Health Organization (WHO), along with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), said that they have to vaccinate 640,000 children throughout Gaza within a short period of time.
The task, however, is a difficult one, as the vast majority of Gazans are crammed into unsafe refugee camps - massive tent encampments, mostly in central Gaza with no access to clean water or electricity.
They are surrounded by over 330,000 tons of waste, which has further contaminated already undrinkable water which, according to experts, may have been the cause of the poliovirus.
The challenge of saving Gaza's children is complicated by the fact that Israeli bombs continue to be dropped on every part of Gaza, including the so-called 'safe zones', which were declared by Israel soon after the start of the war.
The other problem is that Gaza has, for months, subsisted without electricity. Without an efficient cooling system, the majority of the vaccines could become unusable.
But there is more to the suffering of Gaza’s children than the lack of vaccination.
As of August 19, at least 16,480 children have been killed as a direct result of the war, in addition to thousands more who remain missing, presumed dead. The number, according to the Palestinian Minister of Health in Gaza, includes 115 babies.
Many children have starved to death, and “at least 3,500 children in Gaza are facing (the same fate) amid a lack of food and malnutrition under Israeli restrictions on the delivery of food,” a ministry spokesman said.
Additionally, so far, more than 17,000 children in Gaza have either lost one or both parents since the start of the war on October 7.
One of the main reasons as to why Gaza's children account for the majority of victims of the war is that homes, schools and displacement shelters have been the main targets of the relentless bombardment.
According to a statement by the UN Experts last April, "more than 80% of schools in Gaza (have been) damaged or destroyed."
"It may be reasonable to ask if there is an intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system, an action known as ‘scholasticide’,” they wrote.
The trend of targeting schools continues. On August 18, Palestine's Education Minister, Amjad Barham said that over 90 percent of all Gaza schools have been destroyed, the official Palestinian news agency, WAFA reported.
Of the 309 schools, 290 have been destroyed as a result of Israeli bombing. This has left 630,000 students with no access to education.
While homes and schools can be rebuilt, the precious lives of killed children cannot be restored.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Education, as of July 2, 8,572 students in Gaza and 100 in the occupied West Bank have been killed at the hands of the Israeli army. 14,089 students in Gaza and 494 in the West Bank have also been injured.
These are the worst losses suffered by Palestinian children within a relatively brief period of time since the Nakba, the destruction of the Palestinian homeland in 1948. The tragedy worsens by the day.
No child, let alone a whole generation of children, should endure this much suffering, regardless of the political reasoning or context.
International and humanitarian law has designated a “special respect and protection” for children during times of armed conflict, the international humanitarian law databases of the Red Cross resolve. These laws may apply to Palestinian children in theory, but certainly not in practice.
The betrayal of these children by the international community shall stain the collective consciousness of humankind for decades to come.
Indeed, this is a war on Palestinian children - a war that must stop before a whole generation of Palestinian children is completely erased.
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